NOTHING'S CHANGED, BUT EVERYTHING'S DIFFERENT*

This is my contribution to Mental Health Awareness Week (May 2018).

Over the past four years the circumstances of my life have changed very little. I have the same job, live in the same town, have the same wife (admittedly Rachel has gone from my girlfriend to wife in that time), have pretty similar interests and spend my time doing broadly similar things. However, what has changed has been my experience of, well, pretty much everything. So I'm doing all the same things but my experience of them has fundamentally shifted, with remarkably very little effort at all.

These 'shifts' I've experienced have come about through learning about, and seeing the truth of, the nature of thought and the nature of consciousness. Not through trying or using techniques or coping strategies or by making a purposeful effort. However, I learned by looking in the direction of how our experience works and realising how many misunderstandings I'd collected and believed in over time that got in the way of doing my best and having more fun.

What I have learned has been so simple yet so helpful, grounded in reality yet transformative, that it's hard to believe that these aren't the first items on the national curriculum.I am not trying to pass this off as a rags to riches tale though - I was in a good place four years ago (and every year before that), it's just now I'm less stressed, have more fun and get more done with very little hassle..

So what have I learned that helps?

The nature of thought...

Thought and Feeling (or emotion) are two sides of the same coin. You don't get angry because somebody cut you up on the road or because you split a cup of coffee on the floor. You get angry because you had an angry thought and without realising, believed it. That's it. It's ok, it happens to us all, but in my experience, we spend less time feeling crap when we realise that we don't have to keep giving our attention to the thinking that created the feeling.

Thought is transient, temporary energy that blows through our minds like the wind. You don't have to listen to your thoughts, take them seriously and believe them. My guess is that the happiest people are those that take very little interest in what they think. We don't have to get caught up in a low mood (having a load of transient, temporary energy passing through our minds) and read anything into it. We don't have to 'think positivly' or feel bad if we have negative thoughts. They are transient, temporary energy too.

The nature of consciousness...

We are not our names. We would still be 'us' if we had a different name.

We are not our bodies. We are 'us' if we lose leg and break an arm.

We are not our bank balances, our achievements, our careers, our relationships or our possessions. These are things we have, not who we are.

We are not the labels we have about ourselves ("I'm this type of person," "I like this and not that.") They are only descriptions of a temporary perspective which is always able to change if we are open to it.

When we drop everything we think we are and everything we think we have to do (otherwise known as our ego), we are simple 'aware'. At the core of who we are, the centre of this awareness, is love, fun, peace and well-being. The happiest, most creative, relaxed, 'in the moment' people on earth are children. The reason why is they have not yet learned to hold onto their thinking in ways that cover their innate nature.

If we assume that our bodies, bank balances, jobs or relationships are who we are we will search for bigger, better and prettier ones in a search to feel fulfilled, to be happy. However, this pursuit only takes us away from our true nature (although of course there's nothing wrong with having good jobs, relationships and money). Without thought, we would always experience peace (such as in a deep sleep), but it is the integral mechanism through which we experience everything life. Thought is the missing link, as Sydney Banks, a man infinitely wiser than I, once said (his books are on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2IsGefP).

Which is all well and good you might ask, but what use is this for me in the face of my daily challenges?

I can only talk of my own experience. This has changed simply by looking and seeing and exploring the nature of thought and consciousness. Understanding them makes my life immeasurably easier (but not always easy, for sure) and more enjoyable, because I am far less frequently weighed down by previous misunderstandings about how my experience works. As misunderstandings (e.g. false beliefs that I need x, y or z to be happy) keep dropping away I am grounded back to reality more often. It occurred to me that a definition of 'reality' is 'freedom'. As I gain a clearer understanding the nature of life, I become freer.

Now it's not all sunshine and roses because I'm still human, I still think (and inevitably overthink) and I still miss where my experience is coming from or feel low from time-to-time. However, in the end, we are consciousness experiencing thought and we call this life, and as long as we see that, we're free.

As you look towards the nature of thought and consciousness you find your innate mental health.

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*The title of this blog 'Nothing's changed but everything different' is the perfect explanation of what I've experienced. My life is the same but yet somehow so much better. I first heard this description from Michael Neil, a coach whose book 'The Inside-Out Revolution' started me on this journey.

My own book 'Pressure Myths: Understanding the Psychology of Performance' is an attempt to convey the implications this understanding has for sportspeople and performance is on Amazon at: https://t.co/hses9OAoH5